Protesters clash with police in Nepal as curfew continues

NEPALESE police battled protesters shouting “Down with King Gyanendra” as officials clamped a curfew on the capital for a fourth day to foil demonstrations which have left three dead.

Demonstrators fought security forces with stones, pickaxe handles and bamboo poles while police fired tear gas rounds and rubber bullets and pushed back at least 2,000 protesters with batons, injuring at least a dozen.

“I’ve seen about 50 people injured, some with broken legs, who tried to jump from rooftops chased by police,” said a resident of Gongabu just outside the curfew area.

There were pitched fights in Gongabu, on the outskirts of Kathmandu. Protesters burnt down a police post and tried to set ablaze a senior police inspector’s house as police fired warning shots.

As the curfew came into effect just after midday for a fourth day, people and vehicles disappeared from the streets of Kathmandu, capital of the impoverished Himalayan nation where King Gyanendra seized power 14 months ago in what he said was a bid to crush a deadly Maoist insurgency.

There have been violent running clashes between protesters and police for four days in which hundreds of opponents of the king have been arrested.

In Gongabu, demonstrators held up signs with slogans like “Republic of Nepal-Gongabu”. Republican sentiment is mounting in Nepal, analysts say, despite the fact King Gyanendra is viewed by many in the world’s only Hindu kingdom as the incarnation of Vishnu, god of protection.

State-run Nepal Television said security forces would carry out a “massive search” of homes in Kathmandu for Maoist rebels, who have been fighting to topple the monarchy for the past decade but who now have formed a loose pro-democracy alliance with sidelined opposition parties.

“The government has reliable information that the terrorists have entered the Katmandu valley. We request residents co-operate with security forces,” a newsreader said.

Protests against the king have flared across the country. Three people were killed over the weekend. Ministers have said rebel Maoists are behind violent clashes with police.

A shoot-on-sight curfew was first imposed on the capital on Saturday to thwart a mass protest planned in the city centre by opposition parties. Yesterday morning, people rushed to buy provisions before soldiers with machine guns came onto the streets to enforce the curfew.

Daytime curfews have also been imposed in the popular tourist town of Pokhara in west Nepal, Chitwan in central Nepal and Butwal in the west.

Rights groups called for a halt to the crackdown in which hundreds of prominent lawyers, journalists and politicians have been arrested, along with activists and civilians.

Amnesty International’s Asia Pacific director Purna Sen said: “Rather than justifying use of excessive force, the government should be ensuring the police and army act within the law to protect people’s lives.”

Some 10,000 people marched yesterday through the centre of Pokhara, about 200km west of Kathmandu, where the king has been holidaying. Some began throwing stones at police who responded first with tear gas and rubber bullets and then with live gunfire when the protesters refused to disperse, according to a town official.